YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper
by genial_candlestand
Need to get the subtitles or closed captions from YouTube videos for analysis, translation, or archiving? This scraper pulls the text directly from an...
Opens on Apify.com
About YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper
Need to get the subtitles or closed captions from YouTube videos for analysis, translation, or archiving? This scraper pulls the text directly from any public YouTube video, handling single URLs or entire playlists and channels. You can extract the raw transcript text along with its timestamps. Once you have the data, export it in the format that fits your workflow: structured JSON for an app, a simple CSV for a spreadsheet, an Excel file for sharing, clean HTML for the web, or XML for further processing. It grabs both manually uploaded subtitle files and the auto-generated captions YouTube provides. I use this for a few specific things: creating searchable archives of lecture or tutorial content, getting text for translation projects, and performing content analysis on video topics. It saves the massive time sink of manual transcription. Just plug in the video links, choose your output format, and run it. The data comes out ready to use.
What does this actor do?
YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper is a web scraping and automation tool available on the Apify platform. It's designed to help you extract data and automate tasks efficiently in the cloud.
Key Features
- Cloud-based execution - no local setup required
- Scalable infrastructure for large-scale operations
- API access for integration with your applications
- Built-in proxy rotation and anti-blocking measures
- Scheduled runs and webhooks for automation
How to Use
- Click "Try This Actor" to open it on Apify
- Create a free Apify account if you don't have one
- Configure the input parameters as needed
- Run the actor and download your results
Documentation
YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper This scraper accepts YouTube videos URLs as an input and returns video subtitles (captions). # How do I use YouTube Video Subtitles (captions)? YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper is designed to be user-friendly, even for those who have never extracted data from YouTube before, Here’s how you can use YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper to extract YouTube subtitles data: - Create an Apify account. - Open YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper. - Add one or more YouTube video URLs to scrape subtitles. - Click the "Start" button and wait for the data to be extracted. - Download your data in JSON, XML, CSV, Excel, or HTML. # Input example The input for YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper should be a YouTube video URL. You can add as many URLs as you want or even import a CSV file or Google Sheet with a prepared list of URLs. Then select the subtitle language to be extracted and whether to extract automatically generated subtitles (ASR) if there are no subtitles added by users, and click Start. Click on the input tab for a full explanation of an input example in JSON. # What data can you scrape? - Subtitle start time - Subtitle duration time - Subtitle text - Video ID - Video Author - Video URL - Video Title - Video Description - Video Keywords - Video Length # Data output example The scraped data will be shown as a dataset which you can find in the Storage tab. Note that for convenience the video data is repeated in each line of the result.
You can preview all the fields and choose in which format to download the data: JSON, Excel, HTML table, CSV, or XML. Here below is the same dataset in JSON: json [ { "videoId": "nn-bCRvhNUM", "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn-bCRvhNUM", "videoTitle": "Tour of Apify - The web scraping and automation platform", "videoLength": "192", "videoDescription": "An introduction to Apify, the web scraping, and automation platform. \nLearn how Apify can help you make the web more programmable, turn websites into APIs and automate virtually anything on the web. \n\nApify enables you to easily run serverless cloud programs called actors that can be programmed to perform any job, from sending a simple email to crawling websites with millions of pages. On top of that, Apify enables you to seamlessly integrate actors with other apps, create tasks with pre-defined settings, schedule your runs, access stored data, and much more!\n\n👀 Take a look at Apify! - https://apify.com\n\n🏪 Want to extract data from a specific website? Visit Apify Store - https://apify.com/store\n\n📖 Learn more about web scraping and automation! - https://blog.apify.com\n\n⌛Timestamps:\n0:00 - Introduction\n0:39 - Welcome to Apify\n1:15 - Actor example\n1:32 - Tasks\n1:30 - Schedules\n2:05- Proxies\n2:30 - Custom solutions\n2:45 - Learn more about web scraping and automation\n2:57 - Check our other videos!", "videoKeywords": [ "web scraping platform", "web automation", "scrapers", "Apify", "web crawling", "web scraping", "data extraction", "best web scraping tool", "API", "how to extract data from any website", "web scraping tutorial", "web scrape", "data collection tool", "RPA", "web integration", "how to turn website into API", "JSON", "data extraction tools", "web scraping javascript", "web scraping python", "data collection tools", "data collection tools and techniques", "data collection tools and strategies", "web scraper", "web api integration" ], "author": "Apify", "start": "0", "duration": "4.56", "text": "Do you want to extract data from the web?\nMaybe you’ve tried it, but you had problems, " } ] # How much will it cost to scrape Youtube Subtitles? One short (up to 5 minutes) video scraping cost about $0.004, Apify provides you with $5 free usage credits to use every month on the Apify Free plan and you can get up to 1 250 000 video subtitles for those credits. Note that the cost of parsing depends on the duration of the video and other factors and may vary. # Is it legal to scrape Youtube? Our scrapers are ethical and do not extract any private user data, such as email addresses, gender, or location. They only extract what the user has chosen to share publicly. We therefore believe that our scrapers, when used for ethical purposes by Apify users, are safe. However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data. Personal data is protected by the GDPR in the European Union and by other regulations around the world. You should not scrape personal data unless you have a legitimate reason to do so. If you're unsure whether your reason is legitimate, consult your lawyers. You can also read our blog post on the legality of web scraping
Categories
Common Use Cases
Market Research
Gather competitive intelligence and market data
Lead Generation
Extract contact information for sales outreach
Price Monitoring
Track competitor pricing and product changes
Content Aggregation
Collect and organize content from multiple sources
Ready to Get Started?
Try YouTube Video Subtitles (captions) Scraper now on Apify. Free tier available with no credit card required.
Start Free TrialActor Information
- Developer
- genial_candlestand
- Pricing
- Paid
- Total Runs
- 67,121
- Active Users
- 629
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